NL West is the Best

Remember all the pre-season talk about how bad the NL West would be in 2009? Well, we are well over a third of the way through the season and the NL West has the best winning percentage of any division in the National League. The NL West has the best team in all of baseball, followed by the current NL Wild-Card leader. Not too shabby if you ask me. Let's take a look at the breakdown of the standings in the NL West and how the two other divisions stack up.

NL West Standings
Team	W	L	Pct
Dodgers	42	22	.656
Giants	34	28	.548
Rockies	31	32	.492
Padres	28	34	.452
Diamondbacks	27	37	.422
NL West	162	153	.514
NL Central	188	185	.504
NL East	146	164	.471

So much for the "haters" excusing the Dodgers MLB best record on the division they play in. The NL West is more than holding it's own up to this point. Fans of the NL West will point to the pathetic 16-45 record of the Washington Nationals pulling down their division. While this is true, it is also inflating the records of the top four NL East teams. The NL Central is a solid division, but lacks the dominating team that the NL West has. I cut the NL Central teams some slack, because they have 5 other divisional foes to beat out every season, as opposed to the 4 that the other two NL West divisional teams must beat out. But in the end, I think the wild-card evens that out.